One of the hottest sectors in consumer electronics involves wirelessly streaming your media to either your TV or your stereo. There are a number of add-ons for iTunes and even Apple TV does a great job of streaming your music, photos, and videos. But what if you just want to stream audio to your stereo or amplifier or powered speakers? Slim Devices was known for having one of the better options on the market in the form of the Squeezebox and Logitech always seemed to be playing catch-up. The merging of the two companies has produced what Logitech hopes is the ultimate, affordable wireless music system: the Squeezebox Duet.

First off, it’s an interesting choice of names considering at first look the Duet appears to be a combo of the Squeezebox and Logitech’s old offering the Wireless DJ Music System. So, technically the two have joined together and are now streaming your music.

Remotes from left to right: Wireless DJ, Duet, Squeezebox

I’m reaching here. The real reason it’s called the Duet is because it features two parts: the multi-room controller (remote) and the Receiver. At any rate, read on to see if we think that the Squeezebox Duet can carry a tune.
The Hardware

Controller: The Duet comes with a remote control that features a 240×320 2.4-inch 256k color display. The remote itself has an iPod-like scroll wheel for navigating and also buttons for play, home, back (navigation-wise), volume up and down, a plus button (for adding the song to your favorites), and backwards, forwards and pause.

Closeup of the buttons and the scroll wheel on the remote

The remote also includes a speaker which plays a tone when you power up or down the device and when you navigate. It’s a little thicker than most other remotes and not too ergo-friendly, but it gets the job done.

The biggest drawback I found with the remote is its use of a rechargeable battery. This means that not only will it not always work when I need it, but I need to make sure to find a place for the charging cradle. I would have preferred the option of being able to drop in a fresh set of batteries when needed and had one less piece of hardware to worry about.

On the plus side, it’s not a line-of-sight remote so you can walk around and even go into another room and not only see what’s playing but navigate around your music library. In our tests we went from one end of the house to the other and were still able to change songs with ease.

Receiver: The receiver is basically a black brick but it’s what’s under the hood that counts. It features both ethernet and 802.11G Wi-Fi, RCA outs, and even digital output options.

Setup
I unboxed the Duet and found a card that said “go to squeezenetwork.com/start first”. I chose a username and password and then plugged the receiver into my Bose Wave Radio. I then downloaded the necessary setup software (now called Squeezecenter and available for PC, Mac, and Linux) and was streaming my MP3s in minutes. There’s a handy wizard that guides you through the process step-by-step, if you’re not good with networking and the like. You really don’t have to be, though, but it’s nice to have it there if needed.

The folks at Logitech deserve kudos for really simplifying the experience. Not only is it easy and intuitive to get a server up and running and streaming your music (I tested on a MacBook), you can even start streaming right away from the SqueezeNetwork. You can start listening to music even without your computer.

Testing music playback
{ad}I ran a bunch of test scenarios to see how many improvements have really occurred. I have about 40GB of music in an MP3 directory. I first allowed the software to just stream my iTunes library but then I told it to stream from the directory of MP3s itself. This required it to “clear library and rescan everything”, as it says, but it did so in minutes, and much faster than in previous versions of the software.

The only hiccups I encountered were when I moved the MP3s to an external storage device. Apparently, Squeezecenter stores the path of the file and not just the location, so when I moved the MP3s directory, it couldn’t locate them. The remote still found the database, though, and pretended to play them until it finally realized what was happening and just started skipping through until it could find a song that was actually at the location the database had recorded it at. I’m not sure what Logitech can do to fix this issue, or if it’s even worth fixing, but it slowed me down.

I should also mention that the Duet doesn’t currently play DRM’d tracks from either iTunes or Zune Marketplace. For me this wasn’t a show stopper since most of my music was ripped from CDs that I already own, or turned into an MP3 without DRM long ago.

Another problem I encountered occurred after I had let the battery in the remote run down. When I finally charged it and it was ready to play, it refused to find my server. It found the receiver no problem but the server couldn’t be found. Then it suddenly started downloading a firmware update. I haven’t had the problem since so it was either a problem with older firmware, or a problem that occurs when a new firmware is trying to be downloaded. Thankfully, it’s been working great since.

Squeezenetwork.com
Logitech built a lot of power into its Squeezenetwork.com site. From the site you can subscribe to a bunch of audio sources, with more being added. For example, you can setup the Duet to stream Slacker, MP3tunes, Rhapsody, Pandora, and more. You can either enter in an existing account or start a fresh one for one of the services being offered, right from the interface.

In my case, while I was testing the Duet, Logitech announced a deal that lets them stream Sirius radio through the Duet. I logged into the Squeezenetwork and checked a box and was immediately listening to Sirius radio on a 30-day free trial. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

The nicest thing about all of the audio choices is that you can technically use the Duet without ever hooking it up to a computer.

Extras, and more
In addition to the audio sources available, the Duet includes an Information Browser, which is basically an RSS feed reader, Podcasts, Sounds and Effects. There are quite a few to choose from and I’ve used the Babbling Brook on a few occasions to lull my two month old to sleep. You can add your own Podcasts and RSS feeds, so it’s totally customizable.

Navigating the remote
I mentioned the remote a bit above but I wanted to highlight the UI in particular. It’s well designed in that it’s responsive and features a lot of control. However, it’s very easy to get lost, especially when you consider that you can have servers running on multiple machines, as well as the Squeezenetwork as a source. I still find myself getting lost when trying to switch sources, even though it should be pretty straight forward. I also was expecting that since I had my computer in the mix, that I could control a lot more items from the remote instead of having to go to the Squeezenetwork.com site. Maybe in a future firmware update?

Expanding the system
While the Duet comes with one remote and one receiver, it can be expanded in a variety of ways. For example, the Duet remote can control older models of Squeezebox offerings, and you can even add additional controllers and remotes to your system. I didn’t test this but it sounds like a great option for powering more than one Squeezebox in your home.

In this review I’ve really just found minor things to point out as cons. The Duet is a great system and I have already helped one person purchase one for his home. The UI issues can be addressed with firmware updates but I’m still not happy with the rechargeable remote situation. Otherwise, it’s a great option if you’re looking for an elegant way to stream and control music and audio through your home.

One more thing: I’m hearing that the remote has a bunch of cool features built-in that aren’t being used yet. These include an SD card slot, headphone jack on the remote, accelerometer, and more. I can’t wait to see what Logitech has in mind for the future.

Reader Comments

Sounds cool, though the Sonos is still the best in the field from what I have seen. It's really expensive though and it works the best is you have a big place…

Ro

What a piece of junk my unit is! I have to re-set it up at least twice a week, the remote looses connection to the unit and NO controller-function whatsoever. The unit freezes up, it tries to connect to a wireless NW although it is hardwired to a router that is always on, customer service sucks as they talked me into connecting it to the PC which does not fix my problem – I am about to go MAD! It actually got worse with the latest update. Beware of lemons!!! And nobody is helping!

remd

You should try the 7.3.3 (r6038) update for the Duet Controller that was release last June ’09, it fixed most of the bugs.